Building Trust and Managing Brand Relationships with Stakeholders

Modern organizations operate in complex socio-economic systems interacting with specific groups of stakeholders. These challenges also apply to micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which environment includes various support initiatives. The exploitation of this support requires the development of direct relations between SMEs and support stakeholders, which should be based on social and formal trust. From the perspective of small businesses, this trust includes two dimensions: The ability to build the brand of a trustworthy entity and the assessment of the reliability of support stakeholders. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to identify and assess the role of trust in support the exploitation process from the small business perspective. Analyses are based on the results of the survey research in a random sample of 1, 741 SMEs from the European Union. The results indicate that both trust dimensions are the significant mediator in the process of external support exploitation in small businesses. The conclusions enrich the management theory and practice with a number of recommendations in the scope of building mutual and long-term trust between SMEs and support stakeholders. It is particularly important in crisis situations requiring fast and radical systemic solutions addressing support for small businesses (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Joanna Paliszkiewicz and Kuanchin Chen.